In the dim, damp chill of the whale-bone treasury, the oil lamp's feeble flame stretched their shadows long and grotesque across the walls.
The cool iridescence radiating from the great pearls brought no warmth whatsoever — it felt instead like a row of indifferent eyes, watching this absolute suppression of power play out in silence.
Marlena still held both arms curved around Sophia's neck, the strand of black pearls — the highest honor of Avalon — now settled firmly at the land Queen's throat.
Her bronzed face had drawn so close she could feel the cool, ice-like breath on Sophia's lips.
Seeing that Sophia had not pulled away, a triumphant gleam sparked in the depths of Marlena's eyes. That predatory hunger — unique to creatures of the ocean, the urge to drag prey down into the abyss — swelled in that instant to its absolute peak.
Even a Queen who commands divine fire is still just a girl in the end.
Faced with my total surrender and this wealth beyond reckoning, who could remain unmoved?
If you accept my closeness — then here in Avalon City, I remain the Queen whose word is law.
We could rule together. Perhaps even... I could show you a wildness that no woman of the land could ever give you.
Look at that high-ponytail General behind you — she's grinding her teeth to dust, isn't she?
How pitiable. She can only be your sword. While I... can be your harbor.
The smile on Marlena's face grew more and more brazen. She even pushed her chest slightly forward, attempting to press closer still — to slip her way into Sophia's arms.
But in the very next instant — the moment she thought she was about to succeed — a hand, slender yet white as jade, rose without the faintest trace of urgency. It caught Marlena's chiseled jaw with precise, unhesitating force and held it fast.
"Hss——!"
That was not a word. That was the sound of Marlena sucking in a sharp, involuntary breath.
Sophia had not risen from her salvaged-wood chair. She sat exactly as she had before — composed, upright — but in those pale golden pupils, something had crystallized. A cold light, colder and more merciless than the deepest waters of Avalon's sea.
That gaze crossed the scant distance between them and drove itself, like a blade, into the depths of Marlena's soul.
"Marlena."
Sophia's voice was cool and utterly emotionless — and yet it carried the weight of a god of death pronouncing sentence.
"This Queen permitted you to fasten the necklace as a rite of submission. Not as an invitation for you to fawn and wheedle — and certainly not as permission... for you to entertain certain delusions."
Marlena's heart lurched. Her instincts screamed at her to pull free — and then, with a bolt of genuine terror, she realized: that hand, which looked no thicker than her own wrist, was exerting a force that felt like the weight of the ocean floor itself pressing down upon her.
Her jaw was locked as though caught in a vice forged from refined steel. Left, right, forward — she threw the full, desperate strength of a body that had wrestled sea beasts all her life against that grip, and it did not yield by a single fraction.
How is this possible?!
This girl — who is half a head shorter than me, who looks like a stiff breeze could knock her over — how does she possess this kind of... pure, absolute, brute physical power?!
I am the Queen of Avalon. I am a warrior who can haul a hundred-meter fishing net by herself.
So why do I feel, beneath her fingers, like a helpless red crab whose shell is about to be crushed?
No... it isn't only the strength.
The way she's looking at me... that is the gaze someone turns on an object. On a dead thing.
She doesn't see me as a person at all, let alone as a beauty. In her eyes, I am no different from these pearls, these incense bricks — even from that coconut she blew apart. I am simply another asset.
The violent fear, at last, completely overwhelmed the absurd urge to conquer.
Cold sweat broke across Marlena's bronzed face in an instant, sliding over her eyes, which were now wide and stark with terror.
Shhhk——!
In that same moment, Delilah — standing behind Sophia — drew the heavy longsword that was formidable even in full darkness, clearing the scabbard completely.
The blood-red blade flickered with a murderous light beneath the oil lamp's glow. Its tip rested less than an inch from Marlena's throat.
Delilah's crimson eyes were locked on Marlena with an absolute, unblinking intensity, and the killing intent radiating from every line of her body dropped the temperature of the entire treasury to absolute zero in an instant.
All Sophia had to do was ease her fingers the smallest degree — and Delilah's blade would pierce this greedy woman's throat without a moment's hesitation.
Sophia's fingers tightened slightly. Her fingertips pressed white marks into Marlena's skin. Her tone grew colder still.
"Do not imagine This Queen is keeping you because you are somehow irreplaceable.
I am keeping you because, for the moment, you have some uses — and because you save This Queen the trouble of absorbing this territory from scratch.
That does not make you indispensable.
In Mason, in my Ministry of Internal Affairs, there is no shortage of talented people eager to serve. If This Queen wished it, even the half of the patrol made up of black musket soldiers could take over this small city with no difficulty whatsoever."
Sophia's gaze swept briefly to Delilah's brow — fine-boned and elegant, yet drawn taut with fury — and her voice dropped a shade, suffused with something that could only be called a sovereign's fierce protectiveness over her own.
"If you dare try these petty schemes of yours again — if you dare use these crude methods to make This Queen's most loyal retainers unhappy...
Then This Queen promises: the very instant any one of my retainers voices a grievance, will be the very instant your soul returns to your Sea God.
Do you understand. City Lord of Avalon City."
Marlena stared at Sophia, all thought suspended. The pain at her jaw, Delilah's blade at her throat, and the absolute, heaven-overturning dominance radiating from this land Queen's very existence — it shattered every last fragment of her arrogance and wishful thinking.
In front of this woman, what she called her wildness had been nothing but a laughable performance.
"Y... yes, Sovereign."
"Call me Your Majesty the Queen."
Sophia's tone was entirely earnest. She could feel the woman in her grip trembling.
"Yes... Your Majesty the Queen."
Marlena forced the words from her throat in a raw, hoarse rasp.
In the frantic trembling of that lopsided high ponytail, she finally understood — completely and without reservation — that the being she faced was a true god walking in the mortal world.
Sophia released her hand.
Marlena collapsed onto the sandy floor, gasping in great, ragged lungfuls of air.
She did not wipe the cold sweat from her face. She simply stared, glassy-eyed, as Sophia elegantly adjusted the strand of nine black pearls at her own neck.
Moonlight filtered through the cracks in the whale-bone treasury and fell across Sophia's cool, composed features. Delilah stood at her back with heavy sword in hand; the others held their positions in quiet, motionless vigil behind her.
Even Daphne and Irene — who had seemed the gentlest of the group only moments ago — now watched Marlena with eyes utterly cold, like wolves waiting for the moment their master gave the signal to tear.
And then the violet-haired girl — the one who had looked the most even-tempered throughout — delivered what was, in its understated way, the most humiliating gesture of all.
She produced a clean handkerchief and, with meticulous care, wiped Her Majesty's hand. The very hand that had just been gripping Marlena's jaw.
Watching that scene unfold, the last ember of Marlena's will to challenge guttered out entirely — replaced by something she had never felt before: a fervent, unconditional adoration.
---
They stepped out of the damp, dimly lit whale-bone treasury. The salt-wet sea wind swept in at once, scattering the centuries of stale air that had gathered in that cave.
Sophia walked at the front. At her throat, the strand of black pearls — warmed faintly by her skin — shimmered with a soft, liquid luster in the moonlight.
Behind her, Delilah kept pace like a shadow — sword sheathed, steps measured and steady. But whenever her crimson gaze crossed to Marlena, who trailed alongside them, it still carried a residual chill that had not yet fully faded.
They returned to the rear courtyard of Sea's Edge House, where Willow had a pot of warm green tea already waiting.
Marlena was visibly ill at ease. She stood barefoot in the fine sand, the inhuman strength Sophia had just demonstrated still rattling through her bones — and yet the wildness in her core still made her edge instinctively, tentatively, closer to Sophia's side, as though drawn by some primal, almost animal impulse.
But as Sophia passed by her, those footsteps slowed for just a moment. Those pale golden pupils settled on Marlena's slightly coarse, wind-roughened hair for half a second — and then Sophia's brow gave the faintest, almost imperceptible furrow.
"Marlena."
Sophia turned. The moonlight wrapped around her cool silhouette.
"The air in Avalon City is fresh. But your scent... is somewhat at odds with Mason's standards of propriety."
Marlena blinked. She lifted her arm and, instinctively, sniffed.
There was nothing unpleasant about the smell — it was the scent of a life spent among the waves. Salt brine. The cool cleanness of fish scales. The dry, sun-baked warmth of skin that had weathered years at sea. In Avalon, it was the smell that only the strongest, finest hunters ever carried.
But having once caught the faint trace of wild berries and cold pine drifting from Sophia's skin, Marlena felt, for the first time, a roughness she had never been aware of before.
"Your Majesty finds... the smell of the sea offensive?" Marlena laughed quietly at herself, a flicker of something bleak passing through her eyes.
"No. Merely unrefined."
Sophia settled onto a stone seat, her voice rational and unhurried.
"Willow — take the City Lord to wash up. Since she is now a City Lord of Mason, she ought to learn how to present herself in front of This Queen the way a Mason noble would."
Willow led Marlena to the bathroom in the side hall.
The bathing pool here had been installed at considerable expense by Old Pierre, fed by a warm spring — but to Willow's eyes, it was still spartan enough to draw a quiet, private sigh.
With an utterly composed expression, Willow opened a finely lacquered case and removed two milky-white solid bars emitting a deeply pleasant fragrance, alongside a small bottle of amber liquid that poured with a rich, viscous sheen.
"What is this? Some kind of... solidified oil?"
Marlena eyed the slippery-looking objects with undisguised bewilderment.
"These are a gift from Her Majesty. They are called Black Rose Essence Soap."
Willow's voice was entirely level, but her movements were astonishingly practiced.
"As for this bottle — it is specifically designed to cleanse your hair, which has been corroded by years of sea salt. It is called shampoo. Stand still. I will show you how to use it."
The milky-white soap was worked between Willow's hands — just once — and it exploded into a foam so white and dense it put every cloud in Avalon's sky to shame.
What kind of sorcery is this?
A single touch — and it produces this much of... this snow-white stuff?
And the scent — nothing like Avalon's harsh wildflowers. This was something deeper. Like stepping into a forest after summer rain.
The sea salt. The years of grime and dullness caked into her skin, stubborn as barnacles, the kind she had never been able to fully wash away — all of it dissolved, bit by bit, under the embrace of that foam.
My skin... could feel like this?
Is this what Her Majesty uses every day to maintain that sacred, untouchable cleanliness?
Standing in front of something this gentle — like bathing in clouds — everything I've done up until now feels like the behavior of someone who was raised in a cave.
And when the amber liquid was worked through her hair and that faint violet fragrance bloomed between Willow's fingers — the strands that sea wind had left dry and knotted seemed to breathe. They became smooth and heavy, one by one, as though they had been given back something they had always been missing.
Out in the corridor beyond the bathroom, Hailey was pressed flat against a stone pillar, her small nose working in deep, rapturous sniffs. Her pen tip drew a light, cheerful arc across the page:
Sea's Edge House.
Her Majesty has deployed the gentlest form of sensory cleansing.
She did not use a black musket to reform City Lord Marlena. She used this small bar of soap — developed together by Irene-jiejie and Willow-jiejie.
I understand now! Her Majesty is peeling away this woman's wild shell.
When City Lord Marlena discovers that she can transform from a savage creature of the sea into a refined woman carrying the fragrance of the land — her worship of Her Majesty will evolve from awe into something like devotion.
The fragrance drifting from the bathroom has already drowned out the salt and brine of the waves.
It means the last stubborn breath of Avalon's defiance has been submerged beneath Her Majesty's foam.
Half an hour later, the bathroom curtain was drawn aside.
The woman who stepped out made even Irene and Daphne — lounging with their tea beneath the terrace — glance over with a faint, involuntary stir of surprise.
She still had that same beautifully athletic, evenly bronzed physique. But now it shimmered with a suppleness, a luminosity, like the finest silk catching the light.
Her formerly coarse hair now fell damp over her shoulders, carrying the clean, airy fragrance of lavender.
She had been dressed in a fine-spun moonwhite silk gown, specifically from Mason — and the way that fabric draped over her powerfully curved body tempered her wildness into something that could only be called an aggressive, intellectual beauty.
Marlena walked to stand before Sophia, reaching up to smooth her newly silken hair with a touch of self-conscious unfamiliarity.
She looked down at her own fingertips — trimmed clean, emitting a faint, sweet fragrance — and the civilizational shock of it all made the look she turned on Sophia shift: past fear and reverence, into something burning and fanatical, the look of one who has decided to follow absolutely.
"Your Majesty..."
Marlena's voice was still husky — but softer now.
"This cleanliness... is terrifying. It makes me feel as though I've been living all my life like an oyster that never once saw the light."
Sophia set down her teacup and looked the transformed Marlena over, a flicker of satisfied rationality moving through her eyes.
"This is the most unremarkable part of everyday life in Mason.
When you learn to value this fragrance — that is when you will understand why you must protect the authority in your own hands.
Because only under This Queen's Order will you have the right to enjoy any of it."
Marlena looked at her own hands in the moonlight — gleaming now with a soft, jade-like translucence — the faint lingering of lavender still on her fingertips.
The scent was nothing like the bluntness of the sea wind. It wound around the senses like a thread of silk, drawing you in without your noticing — luring you into the comfortable illusion of being carefully tended by something called civilization.
"How utterly audacious..."
Marlena murmured under her breath, with a note of wry self-mockery.
As the former Queen of Avalon, she should, by rights, have been furious at Sophia's condescending, gift-dispensing tone.
But in this moment — feeling the silk slide against her skin — she could not deny it. Sophia was right.
In the face of this kind of overwhelming, superior refinement, the wildness Avalon had always taken such pride in did look, suddenly, a little clumsy. A little cheap.
Marlena drew a deep breath. That fragrance worked a near-miraculous calm on her restless spirit.
She did not retreat. Instead she stepped forward — stopping at precisely three paces from Sophia — and the gleam in her eyes had shifted into something sharp and mercantile.
"Your Majesty — this soap, and this shampoo — to you, they may be the most trivial of daily necessities.
But in Avalon, they are Divine Miracles."
Marlena went down on one knee. The moonwhite gown fanned out around her with the motion, smoothing away the aura of violence and adding, in its place, an arresting and captivating grace.
"Avalon's population is small, and its rules are few — but the chieftains who control the salt fields and the whaling fleets have amassed great quantities of gold and pearls with nowhere to spend them.
Since I am now your City Lord... I humbly request that Your Majesty grant me the exclusive rights to sell this fragrance."
Marlena raised her head. Her gaze met Sophia's directly, burning with a near-fanatical longing.
"I want every noble in Avalon — and every fisherman who can trade for enough grain — to kneel every morning beneath the fragrance of Your Majesty's gifts.
And I want to be your one and only agent in Avalon City."
Sophia tapped a fingertip lightly against the rim of her porcelain cup and looked at Marlena's bronzed face — written all over with ambition and a new, clinging attachment.
What a perfectly competent opportunist.
She has seen the control that lies beneath these consumables.
Soap, shampoo, white sugar... once a person grows accustomed to these things, they can never go back. They are not goods. They are the anchors I have driven into Avalon's soul.
Let her be the agent — and the Blue Gold and pearls Avalon has been stockpiling will be spent down at maximum speed. Their accumulated wealth, converted wholesale into Mason's industrial capital.
But the economic lifeline of a territory — that is never something to hand entirely to an untamed local.
"You want to be the agent?"
Sophia allowed a faint smile, her tone cool and measured.
"Very well.
This Queen had already intended to establish a Black Rose flagship store in Avalon City's central district — a place dedicated to selling the miracles of the land."
A flicker of delight crossed Marlena's eyes — but Sophia's next words fell like a bucket of cold water.
"You may serve as provisional agent, responsible for liaising with the local buyers.
You will be given the authority of a store manager — but the shop staff, account management, and supply distribution will be entirely under the jurisdiction of personnel dispatched by Mason's Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Your role is guide and security. Nothing more. Is that clear?
Of course — if you consistently perform well, This Queen will consider expanding your authority."
Delilah cast a cold glance at the sight of Marlena practically trying to press herself against Sophia's knee in her eagerness for a scrap of commercial authority. She let out a quiet, disdainful sound, and the guard of her longsword caught the moonlight with a faint, icy gleam.
She stepped around behind Sophia, took the cloak Willow held out with a perfectly natural motion, and draped it herself over Sophia's shoulders — letting her fingertips linger deliberately at the side of Sophia's neck for a moment. Precisely where Marlena had fastened the black pearl necklace.
"City Lord — please remember Her Majesty's teachings."
Delilah's voice was colder than the deepest water in Avalon's sea.
"In Mason, Order is above all else.
Do not presume, through these little schemes of yours, to overstep your station.
Remember only this: you are Her Majesty's subordinate. And we... are Her Majesty's family."
Marlena looked at Delilah's utterly undisguised possessiveness, at the visible displeasure on the other girls' faces — and then at Sophia's expression of quiet, tacit acknowledgment.
The last ember of her desire to rule as an equal was extinguished completely, replaced by a far deeper and more settled reverence.
Marlena decided she would never again judge anyone by appearances.
This cold, delicate little beauty with her girl's figure — who had seemed to her like nothing more than a porcelain ornament — was the absolute center of gravity in this entire constellation of relationships. And her capabilities were terrifying.
---
The following morning.
The thin mist over Avalon City had not yet burned off. The air carried a richness — richer than any ordinary morning — a faint, plentiful briny sweetness that spoke of abundant harvest.
Sophia had changed into a sharp, dark riding outfit. Her silver hair had been loosely pinned by Willow with a deep-crimson silk ribbon — it lacked the palace's elaborate finery, but in its place was a brisk, commanding quality, the look of a sovereign surveying newly claimed land.
Delilah kept to her side without an inch of separation, her high ponytail swaying faintly with each watchful step — a blade perpetually on the verge of being drawn.
Irene and Daphne, by contrast, were in notably lighter spirits. They were both thoroughly pleased at Marlena's comeuppance — and on top of that, Sophia had spoken, right in front of everyone, of how much she valued them. Their dreams last night had been sweet ones.
With Marlena and Old Pierre as escorts, Sophia walked Avalon City's streets, paved with crushed shell and rough stone.
Along both sides of the road, nearly every house had a massive wooden drying rack set up at its door.
It was a sight that would have driven any noble of the mainland to absolute madness. Dried scallops the size of half a palm were strung up so densely they looked like rows of buttons, curing in the open air.
Sea fish as long as a person's arm had been split, salted, and laid out to glisten with fat in the sunlight.
Basket after basket of dried shrimp was piled in small mountains, releasing the rich, concentrated aroma unique to high-protein foods.
Sophia reached out and picked up a single dried whelk, feeling its hard, desiccated texture between her fingertips.
In the City of Hill, a single packet of top-grade dried scallops like these could be traded for a small bag of mixed wheat flour.
Here in Avalon, this is the scraps the local people use to fill their stomachs.
This imbalance of resources is a natural wealth-harvesting field.
Even after paying Mason's tax, the surplus they retain is staggering.
If these goods rot on the beach, it is a crime against the Empire's territory.
Sophia needed this force to begin moving — to become the currency these people used to buy Mason's flour and Mason's soap.
"Your Majesty — can these things... truly be traded for your white powder? Even for shampoo and soap?"
Marlena kept pace at Sophia's side. The sea-salt smell had been washed away, but faced with the concept of 'cross-border trade,' she still showed the halting, uncertain quality unique to people of an insular nation.
Sophia swept her gaze across the ring of local people who had gathered around them.
These bronze-skinned men and women watched with eyes full of curiosity — but beneath it, a wariness that went down to the bone.
"Are there really no sea monsters out there on the road?" a fisherman clutching a basket of salted fish asked, voice small and tentative.
"The Orr people used to say that if you crossed those mountains, the earth itself would eat you alive — and there were fire-breathing creatures beyond them..."
In the minds of the people of Avalon, the outside world was a terrifying abyss — a fabrication of lies the Kingdom of Orr had spent fifteen years weaving to maintain its monopoly.
Even with Sophia having demonstrated Divine Miracles before their eyes, they still could not bring themselves to step outside the comfortable circle of tides that enclosed them.
Just as the atmosphere was settling into an awkward stalemate, Old Pierre — who had been walking in quiet silence — suddenly stepped forward.
He gave Sophia a deep, respectful bow, then turned to face the bewildered crowd of local people. His voice rang out loud and clear, saturated with the crisp certainty of a man who had spent his life reading people.
"Friends and neighbors! If you are afraid of those mountains — afraid of the creatures beyond them — then I, Pierre, am not afraid!"
He swept a hand toward the racks packed with drying fish and called out:
"Starting tomorrow — I, Pierre, will represent the Black Rose Merchant Company and purchase every last surplus you have!
Dried fish, dried shrimp — if it's good quality, I will give you a mainland price!
It won't match what Her Majesty gets selling it in the Northern Border — but compared to the moldy wheat you used to beg and grovel to get in exchange, it's at least three times the value!"
The crowd of local people erupted in a wave of barely contained gasps.
Three times? In Avalon, where nothing was worth anything to begin with — this was like Blue Gold raining from the sky onto the beach.
Old Pierre, the old fox — he had spotted the people's timidity and decided to position himself as the first filter.
This low buy price is a godsend to the locals, a windfall for him, and the most stable possible foundation of Order for Sophia.
As long as he could move the goods and bring the money back, Avalon City's gears would begin turning for real.
As for his cut of the margin — that could simply be considered his commission for opening Mason's sea route.
And there was always the commercial tax on top of that. Accounting for everything together, the flow of trade would leave Sophia with a very comfortable take.
The balance of Avalon had been — for now — secured.
____
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